A Fresh Start

By Lenne Bonner, CEO, Clearwater Valley Health

While I treasure each and every memory and experience that comes with each passing year, I also look forward to what comes in a new year. It is a mindset shift for me to be able to wipe the slate clean and start fresh. With that being said, I look forward to everything we know is coming in 2024 at Clearwater Valley Health; as well as the unknowns that we will embrace as they come. But first, I think it is only fair to celebrate the successes 2023 brought to us at Clearwater Valley Health. We were fortunate to be able to add three new providers to our quality provider team in 2023. Nikki Walls, Nurse Practitioner, Laura Noyes, Physicians Assistant, and Dr. Ally Loveland, Family Practice MD. These providers are providing care in our outpatient clinic and Dr. Loveland will be taking care of hospital patients as well.
We also opened our Clearwater Valley Health Sleep Lab in 2023. We offer home sleep tests for those who qualify. For those who need a more comprehensive study, we have two sleep rooms in the hospital for an overnight sleep study. This service was a much needed service in our region in order to provide timely access to the diagnosis and treating of sleep apnea.
With the departure of Dr. Ian Wallace late in 2022, we lost our endoscopic provider so we partnered with Kootenai Health to be able to continue to provide this important preventative screening test. Dr. Aaron Chalmers and Dr. Edward DeTar come to Clearwater Valley Health monthly to perform colonoscopies and EGDs. Dr. Chalmers and Dr. DeTar are full time general surgeons at Kootenai Health but are committed to our mission to keeping care local and really enjoy their time here. Other specialty services brought to our communities through our relationship with Kootenai Health include cardiology and vascular.
As we start fresh in 2024, we are looking at other specialty needs our patients have that we can try to provide locally, either in person or through telehealth. We continually analyze our referral data to determine what our greatest need is to do our best to keep care local as we understand the strain traveling to medical appointments and treatments can put on patients and their families. We also look forward to two new physicians joining our team in the summer/fall of 2024. Dr. Phoebe Alley is finishing her OB fellowship this year and will be moving to Orofino upon completion. Dr. Alley finished her family practice residency in Boise in 2023 and decided to advance her training through an extra fellowship year. Dr. Anna Fox will also be finishing up her family practice residency in Twin Falls/Jerome in 2024 and will be moving to Orofino to practice full spectrum medicine with us. We are very honored to have these highly qualified physicians join our community.
As I reflect on 2023 and look forward to 2024, I want to thank all of you for your continued support of Clearwater Valley Health. I am very honored to live in and be part of such a caring and supportive community and feel blessed to be able to continue to support our quality health care team in providing outstanding healthcare to this community. We all take a lot of pride in the work we do and thank you all for trusting us to be your health care provider. Our commitment to you is to continue to live out our Vision, “One connected team, boldly transforming the health care experience, to become the Leader in Rural Health Care”. I wish you all a treasured 2023 and a fresh start in 2024!